Saturday, April 22, 2006

April update

We pray that you had a wonderful Easter rejoicing in the hope of Christ's resurrection. We came down to Lubumbashi to celebrate with friends. David preached at the Protestant Church for the Police Force. The head Chaplain, Colonel Kalima, is a Mulungwishi graduate. We also celebrated his daughter's wedding. It was especially meaningful in that when we first came to Congo, Kalima and his wife were our students. They had a hard time getting pregnant and the families wanted them to divorce. We were able to get them to an OB-GYN doctor and with a lot of prayer, Lena was conceived. And here she is in her senior year at university and getting married on Easter weekend. What a blessing God is!!! Mulungwishi District happenings When we first got back to Mulungwishi, the District Superintendent came to see me to share what was happening in the District. One particular report was a very strong witness of the grace of our Lord. Pastor Christoph, one of our graduates of 2002 had been sent to Bunkeya. A couple of months ago a girl had been raped and murdered. Two of the three men involved were captured and accused Pastor Christoph of putting them up to it. The DS tried to intervene but the security people were very nasty and arrested Pastor Christoph and accused him of the crime and beat him severely. The DS told them to be careful of how they treated the prisoner, otherwise the same judgment they wanted to dish out would fall upon them. Pastor Christoph was sent to trial some 130 miles away and the two men testified against him. Things really looked bad for him. The DS continued to encourage him and told him to continue to pray. On the third day of the trial, the third person of the group had been caught and he testified as the others had that the pastor was guilty party. That night in his cell, Christoff cried out to God to deliver him. The other prisoner was among the people in his cell. He came to Pastor Christoph during the night to ask or forgiveness for the lies he had been telling in court. Christoph called in another prisoner to witness what this prisoner was saying. The next day this prisoner testified to what he had heard in the cell. The three who had committed the crime confessed that thy had been lying. Christoph was released and came to share his story with the DS. God had come through in his wonderful mercy to save his servant. As a postscript, the head of security in Bunkeya was caught trying to frame a merchant so he could take all his money. He was convicted and is now in prison. This story sounds like a remake of Paul and Silas!!! Settled in We have settled in nicely and have been very busy catching up with the courses that we missed. Lori is feeling better and better. She is experimenting with different foods to see which one's agree with her. Thank you for your continued prayers. Be praying also for the country as it prepares to its first election in many years.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Eastern Congo humanitarian crisis

Afrol news reports that after the huge worldwide response to help tsunami victims, humanitarian aid for Africa has now almost dried up.

"We need money and we need it now," said top UN humanitarian official Jan Egeland. The situation in the eastern part of DR Congo is "the biggest, most neglected humanitarian emergency in the world today," he stated.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Other DR Congo photos

The Flickr web site for photo blogs has thousands of photos for public viewing.  You can even search by "tags" -- key words that the person who uploaded the photo added to identify the photo.  I did a search for DR Congo and found some interesting photos of local people.  Below  are a few links. You can investigate Flickr.com photos on your own too, you know.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Living in Katanga

The Methodist Seminary is located in Mulungwishi, which is in Katanga province, Learn more about living in Katanga at the Congo Pages site.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Back to Mulungwishi

We had a good flight out to Africa. We flew on the evening of from Denver to London. There was a seven hour layover before our night flight on to Lusaka Zambia. We arrived at 6:30 AM in Lusaka, cleared customs and met up with Ramses, the driver. John and Kendra Enright, missionaries in Ndola, Zambia, had sent him down with a van to pick us up and bring us to their home. Ndola is near to the Congo border. It was about a 5 hour drive. Lori was pretty pooped out from the trip. Since our Congolese exit visas were about to expire, I left her in Zambia on and took the passports to Congo to get new visas. This was accomplished in one day. I then went on up to Mulungwishi to look over the situation and get my classes started. I then returned to Zambia to pick up Lori. We spent a few more days in Zambia in order to buy supplies for ourselves and the Women's School. Lori also had a couple of days where she was bothered by the pancreatitis that she is getting over. So we have just been taking it easy as we move along. John and Kendra have been so kind in their hospitality. We had a good border crossing into Congo and came to Lubumbashi. We have been getting more supplies and money for the schools at Mulungwishi. People are very happy we are back. We leave today to return to Mulungwishi. Please pray for our settling back in, the catching up with our classes and Lori's continued recovery. We love you all and are so glad that you are on our team.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Photos and slideshow

You can now view the latest photos from Lori and David online as either as a gallery or a slideshow at Flickr:

The above links will always show the latest posting of photos. To see all photos, use the gallery link and check out prior "pages".

Because this photo blog is now available, the same photos previously posted here have been deleted.

African Beat - Feb. 2006

We are sharing our mailing of the African Beat (PDF, 50KB) newsletter electronically now too. If you need it, you can download the free Adobe Reader, which views PDF files.